


like smoke

by naga-ame (rokutouxei)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 00:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4542558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokutouxei/pseuds/naga-ame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>annie has a lot of bad habits. the two of them walk together, side-by-side, on the way home. armin thinks they're less than good ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like smoke

**Author's Note:**

> [[tumblr]](http://rokutouxei.tumblr.com/post/112216567312/like-smoke)

_Come, let’s go_  
snowviewing  
til we’re buried.

–Matsuo Basho

* * *

When Annie takes a deep breath, her lungs do the honor of filtering through the thin strands of nicotine in the smoke. She can feel all the spaces inside of her, the nooks and crannies all over her small, shaking body, and how they slowly fill with smoke. Sleep had refused to come for days. Everything begins to smell like burn.

Then she exhales. It’s almost ritualistic.

When winter creeps in, it extends cool white arms to drape over the lonely houses and empty roads. To Annie, it feels more comfortable than the noisy bustle of summer and spring, more homey than the lonely dying of autumn. At least, in winter, everyone knows everything else is dead. On the walk home, Annie casts her eyes on the city with embraced flakes of white slush, covering the rooftops and filling in the lonely pathways, sneaking in the gaps between the tree branches that look like mummified remains of their old selves.

The walk home usually takes an average of ten to fifteen minutes, at least when she walked on her own, depending on the weather. But with Armin, even in silence, it took much longer. She would always wonder why, because there was little to waste time on—they never held hands, barely talked. They just walked side-by-side, quiet in each other’s company.

It’s been two months now.

Sometimes, Armin  _attempts_ to begin conversation. Annie nods, sometimes, before Armin leaves. He waves away and smiles at her, beams with a “See you tomorrow, Annie!”

Today is a regular day, except it’s winter, and Armin decides to absentmindedly talk to her. She can hear the soft drawl in his voice, the exhaustion, the sleepiness. “You’re awfully quiet today.” He thrusts his hands deep in the pockets of his coat, holding them closed and fisted.

She shrugs, puts back the stick in between her tight lips and sighs. “Maybe,” she drawls out, his name hitching like a spell in her tongue. (There was  _something_ in the way she says it.)  _I’m always like this, Armin,_ remains unsaid, lingering at the bottom of her throat.

Annie plans to pretend she doesn’t notice—the sticky silence, the way his eyes cling to her like summer sweat. But her palms get itchy and damp and “What?” she finally asks, irked. Her eyes flicker back to the other, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He stands still, making her stop in her tracks as well,

( _She had stopped smoking when he told her to.)_  “It’s not good for you,” he says, eyes pointing to her mouth, casually taking the other two sticks, damp with the weather, out of her pocket.

“I won’t get sick and die, Armin,” she remarks, off-handedly, even if the one she had in between her long fingertips was already underneath her boot.

He frowns. “What if you do?” he asked.

She doesn’t answer, just nods, thinks,  _I’m no good for you, either._

* * *

A snowstorm plods its way through the town overnight, so Annie sits at home with a bundle of old CDs and soup and a blanket. She thinks of sneaking a smoke, ( _just one stick_ , she promises) but she feels it’s cheating, so her hands tremble at her sides, clawing at the straw mat. Maybe she’s let him in more than she’d imagined.

Armin tries to call but it won’t connect, and sooner than not the power is finally cut. He dares himself to brace the storm, but he knows better.

* * *

He’s like the smoke, she realizes. You don’t constantly pay attention to its existence, but when it’s gone, you’re always, always looking for it.

* * *

The next week catches them in the middle of a bad snowfall, unable to walk back home, so he asks permission to take a detour where they end up sitting on a small round table in a quiet, cozy café in the corner. How he makes her agree is beyond her.

Annie is reserved as Armin asks questions, but slowly she lets him in, the little world she’d built inside tall walls. She is scared of what he can do, his perception and the way he reads her like an open book (like no one had ever done before), but when two, three hours pass and their hands graze and when laughter rolls out of him when she blushes at stupid questions, she feels like maybe she can trust him.

He brushes her bangs off her face in a quiet motion, no words spilling out of the seam of his lips, just silence. When the storm dies down Armin is just smiling (no teasing nor mockery), just fondness and warmth she never assumed she deserved.

* * *

When they walk together the day after, they are side-by-side, quiet, shoulders barely brushing, and the way home seems to have extended long, really long, until she’s memorized the pattern of Armin’s breathing, how his hand reaches out to try to touch hers.

She reaches her house and when Armin waves goodbye to her, she waves back, too.

* * *

They walk home together again, the following week, sludging through the weekend’s four inches of snow. They are quiet, and Annie’s hands are itching to hold something, still attacked with withdrawal from her smoke.

“Let’s make snow angels!” Armin suggests, breathing against her ear, when they pass the old playground, devoid of children.

“No, Armin.”

He pouts, that way that makes her eyes twitch and her heart skip. “Why not?” he murmurs silently, hand absentmindedly making its way to tuck a stray lock of blonde hair in her ear (for she only ever lets her hair down when she’s with Armin). “Are you okay?”

_“No, I’m not.”_

…is what she wants to say, but what use were those for anyway? They will only serve to worry Armin. What words her mouth begins to form just swirls as puffs of smoke spiralling out into the crisp white air. And they are fitting, as silence had always done the talking for them; his keen observation, and her silencing eyes.

She reaches the doorstep of her house and Armin kisses the top of her head and slightly pushes her in, so that when she turns around his back is to her and he’s smiling, waving away.

* * *

Armin told her oftentimes—one winter later, whenever she asks why while he’s talking to her he stops in his tracks and the words get gurgled on the edges of his lips—that her eyes reminded him of frozen pools of lakewater, in the dead cold of midwinter. “The kind that glittered,” he said, the kind that makes you stop and stare breathlessly at.

(Armin has this straightforward, honest way with words. She lacks that. For how could she tell the blue-eyed boy that he reminded her of spring mornings right after winter, when the ice is still melting and slowly, the sun is still peering through, the color of his hair?)

“I-I’m sorry,” he stuttered out. “What was I saying?”

“Something about… love?”

* * *

Summer a year later and Armin is calling her from train rides away and he’s laughing—she can almost see his smile reflecting the brightly shining sun while she sits in the small room, melting in the heat. She can hear the sound of the waves in the background, and children giggling, possibly tugging at his shirt. It soothes her, a bit, at least he’s having fun, she thinks.

“You take care there, okay?” he says, (in her dazed brain, his words sweet like ice cream sticking in between her fingertips, his tone warm like the weather) and she nods, before the call is finally cut, a dead beep echoing in the air around her.

She always remembers that voice, which she still hears in her sleep. Now, nobody talks about cruises and sunken boats. The whole event is looked at, and forgotten, dissipating into the air of history and human memory, like smoke.

* * *

It’s a year later now. On the walk home her hands fling to her sides, as if looking, but it meets cold winter air.

Annie pulls out another stick out of her pocket, takes a deep breath.

When Annie takes a deep breath, her lungs do the honor of filtering through the thin strands of nicotine in the smoke. She can feel all the spaces inside of her, the nooks and crannies all over her small, shaking body, and how they slowly fill with smoke. Sleep had refused to come for days. Everything begins to smell like burn. On the walk home, winter has crept in, finally, extending cold white arms covering the rooftops and filling in the lonely pathways, sneaking in the gaps between the tree branches that look like mummified remains of their old selves— _dead_ and  _lonely_ but still standing tall.

Then she exhales.

This is the only way she knows how to mourn. At least, in winter, everyone knows everything else is dead. It’s almost ritualistic.

 _Armin’s not here, anyway,_ she thinks. 

**Author's Note:**

> this was a gift for my friend Kat!!


End file.
